Slavery was wrong, it was bad. Black people wanted no parts of it. They got out of that. They then wanted equal rights and to not be treated like shit. So why in the blue fuck would they want all of that, but still want to believe in Jesus? I’ll never know.

1. Be open minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.

Why: It is essential in order for us to be able to collaboratively work together to find common solutions to pressing world problems.

-Jeremy Jimenez

2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.

Why: We’re more likely to believe what we wish to be true over what we wish not to be true, regardless of veracity. If we’re interested in learning the truth, then we need to actively separate our beliefs from our desires.

-Matthew M.

3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.

Why: Every time humans have questions this method is used to solve them. If we don’t know, we don’t know but instead of making up the answer we use this method to reach a conclusion/answer.

-Zay Jackson

4. Every person has the right to control over their body.

Why: This includes a person\”s right to not be murdered, raped, imprisoned without just cause (violating another person\’s rights), kidnapped, attacked, tortured, etc. This also protects a person\’s freedom of speech and freedom to dress and represent themselves as they so choose.

-Chris Lager

5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.

Why: When one does a good deed it isn’t because God tells one to do a good deed, but because one simply wants to be good person. As Human beings we are capable of defining our own, different, meanings for our lives, with or without a god.

-John Roso

6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognise that you must take responsibility for them.

Why: It may sound obvious, but negligence and refusal to take responsibility are an immense source of harm in the world, from interpersonal relations to Global issues.

-Jamie Andrews

7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.

Why:If everyone did their best to carry this out as far as it can go, everyone would get along much better.

-Carol Fly

8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.

Why: As human beings, we have great power. As Voltaire noted “With great power comes great responsibility.” To not consider others would be selfish and petty. We have demonstrated the ability to be magnanimous, are rapidly becoming more so, and will be even more so in the near future.

-Michael Marr

9. There is no one right way to live.

Why: If you look, even a little, you find many cultures living in moral societies that are fundamentally different, with only a few very basic principles being adhered to between them. Just because one group is different, does not mean they are wrong.

-Eli Chisholm

10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.

Why: The Japanese concept of Kaizen teaches that small incremental improvements can have a profound effect over time. We should all strive to leave the world better than we found it be it through relieving the suffering of others, creating works of art, or passing along knowledge.

It’s fucked up that I have to tell this shit to atheists; I expect that level of bullshit from the religious.

I’m racist if there are people who aren’t black on my atheist page. I’m racist because the page is called ‘Black Atheists’. I’m not about equality and I’m segregating atheism for having ‘black’ in the title. I can’t win for losing.

I get bombarded by mostly other atheists: “Would you be mad if I made a ‘White Atheist’ page?”

It gets more ridiculous than that: “There’s a NAACP, a BET and other shit for black people, where are the white equivalents?” Are you fucking kidding me? Why would a non-marginalized majority need an equivalency? What about that is so hard for you to fucking grasp?!

Let me put it bluntly: Some of you white people need to get over this ridiculous false equivalency in your goddamned heads. You don’t need white pride or other white groups. You don’t need your own channels. You’re already everywhere as it is! Hollywood disregards race and slap white people in “historically correct” movies when there should be brown or black people. Get the-fuck out of here! Telling me that a black atheist page can only exist provided a white atheist page exists is like saying feminism can only exist provided male rights advocacy exists.

I’m not apologizing for putting ‘black’ in my title. Why? Because that’s what I am! I’m Black! I’m a woman! I’m atheist! I’m the only atheist in my family. This rings true for some black families. There are black people right now that are atheists who cannot tell their family that they are atheist. They would lose everyone! WE ARE THE MINORITY WITHIN A MINORITY! Why do I have to spell this shit out to people; especially atheists?

This blog, myTumblr, my Facebook page, my Twitter brings another perspective to people’s lives and a deeper understanding of the joint struggle against religious oppression. Someone on the outside wouldn’t understand black culture unless there was someone there to tell them and show them. Black atheists have cultural challenges that white Atheists know absolutely nothing about. Furthermore, after the gross and racist behavior of prominent white atheists earlier in the year, there truly needs to be alternative voices.

I think black atheists like me and otherminority atheists have a harder time getting out of religion and coming out as secular, atheist, or agnostic because our culture has been drowned in the religion of our past oppressors who used religion to enslave, kill, and oppress us. The awareness of those facts is not in education nor brought to light, so thatblacks, and any other person of color really that had their original belief system replaced by European Christianity. We have hard time coming out as atheist because our family is so intertwined in their faith that anyone who doesn’t believe as they do gets disowned and or killed. It happened to a cousin of mine in the South.

People look at those pages and think I’m categorizing atheism separately because I’m angry, or racist. That’s the furthest from the truth. What atheists and Christians alike fail to realize is that black atheist men & women who have escaped the religion thatwas forcedupon their ancestors – and before that – by their slave masters arethe minority ofthe minority. I need to categorize separately, because religion is in my culture and slave heritage and other black people need to know there are others like them. The demographic of black atheists seems to be smaller than atheists of other races because black people seem to be more influenced by religion. Having a group called ‘Black Atheists’ is more like saying “we do exist.” Rather than saying “we are trying to separate ourselves from atheists of other races”.

In a free-thinking community, you’d think racism would be the least of anyone’s worries. We are all fighting the grand evil, indoctrination for separation from religion. Again, I expected this kind of nonsense more from the religious, but that’s not the case for my page.

There’s black atheist groups and pages on Facebook and other forms of social media that ARE pro-black and don’t allow anyone of a different race to join. Those pages and groups are toxic and I steer clear from them. That’s not me, that’s not what I represent.

On a more serious note, this is what I make of the situation:

I think the problem why there is such thing as ‘Black Entertainment’ but not ‘White Entertainment’ is because the blacks of America have culturally integrated with each other that they form a single Afro-American identity and label them as ‘black’. The whites still keep some of their ancestral identity, which is why they sometimes label themselves as ‘Italian American’, ‘Irish American’, ‘German American’ and etc. This is why you have Italian, Irish, German club as opposed to White clubs. This is not an issue of ethnic minority; it is an issue of ethnic identity. The Asians are a smaller minority but they still label themselves as “of Chinese descent”, “of Japanese descent”, or “of Filipino descent”.

Recent immigrants from Africa do align themselves with their more regional identity. For example, there is a large Somali population in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area who are different from those of Eritrean and Ethiopian descent. There is a vast amount of diversity in the people on the continent of Africa, and even within those three regions, which are all in the same general area.

African-Americans – or as some might argue should be termed “Black Americans” – are a unique American group without cultural ties directly back to Africa because it was systematically erased from each person due to the “peculiar” institution of chattel slavery.

When your children are taken from you, when your own relationships aren’t given the least respect, you can’t learn to record your own history, you’re often ripped away from everyone you know and sent to another environment, not allowed to speak anything but you’re captor’s language, are indoctrinated into their religion, and forced to work past exhaustion, then sometimes beaten for sport, it isn’t possible to pass on your own cultural traditions or even identity.

After a few hundred years of this, when our country finally stopped allowing this horror, its victims were completely wiped of any possible cultural memories that originated from Africa. People’s main concerns were to find their immediate families and to live free. Then Reconstruction was rejected by the scum of the earth, I mean former slave owners, and sharecropping and Jim Crow started, but that’s another lesson.

So, long story short, yes, white people and Asians have their own ethnic identities, and while recent African immigrants have that too, most black people in America don’t because the American institution of chattel slavery systematically removed it from their ancestors.

It’s not just because they were wiped out of any cultural identity by their oppressors. By the time many West Africans were sold to European slavers and were brought to the Americas, the political system in West Africa was nowhere near present day West Africa; there weren’t any rigid political boundaries; it consisted of smaller warring kingdoms. There were no identities such as Nigerian or Ghanaian; they only exist after the era of independence in Africa. The opposite is true for European identities such as English, Irish, German and etc.; they have existed for hundreds of years. Moreover, identities such as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese have existed for nearly a thousand, as opposed to contemporary African identities. So, by the time slavery stopped, Africa has changed a lot without the knowledge of the Africans who were brought to the Americas, bewildering them to which contemporary identity they belong to. This is why a diverse range of African identities exist in Europe but not as much in the Americas, because again, they were recent African immigrants.

So until everyone is free and equal, until justice works for all, until there is no class division that survives by the crushing of the others who are not in the super wealthy class, until privileges based on race [see white privilege] become a thing our descendants look back on in horror and disgust, until every man woman and child is treated with the same honor and dignity as the next, and until every race is given a chance to thrive in a world where we all are truly equal, we cannot ignore color, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or any other distinctions and identifiers because we still live in a world of racism, classism, discrimination, and inequality.

So shut the fuck up with the “you have to look past the color!”, shut the fuck up with “you only see color!”, shut all the way the fuck up with “you’re racist and you’re making this all about color!”

If you’re going to say that don’t say anything at all. Simply, shut the fuck up.

If you’re one of those people who had the pleasure of receiving this as a rebuttal to your tired ass argument – suffice it to say that you actually read it – I hope you learned something. The only person that you’re hurting for continuing to stay willfully ignorant is you.

There is no shortage of violence, misogyny, and intolerance in the Old Testament of the Bible. With passages that tell us to kill homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), kill witches (Exodus 20:10), kill non-believers (Deuteronomy 13:13-18), justify slavery (Leviticus 22:11), killing women who are not virgin on their wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), kill people for working on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:12-15), and countless more commandments by god for his followers to act with extreme cruelty and carry out bloodshed that would make a psychopathic killer seem like an angel, the bible is by far the most disgusting book ever written.

In response to this many Christians use their favourite argument, which is, “that doesn’t count, it’s just the Old Testament!”. Let us look at quickly just how stupid this most widely used Christian argument is:

First of all, nowhere in the New Testament are we told that the Old Testament laws do not apply. In fact, if anything, the opposite of that is true, as Jesus says in Matthew 5:17-19 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Clearly most Christians don’t even read the bible; they just spew out whatever someone else told them. More importantly, Christians claim that both the Old and New Testament were inspired by of god! It’s the same freaking god! Use your brain for a second? In the New Testament, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 it says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Also important to note is that Christians view Jesus as God, which means Jesus was the God of the Old Testament, who commanded all those violent, sexist, and disgusting laws. And we also read in the bible that God does not change (Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17). But interestingly enough, Jesus in the New Testament is still very violent; as he promises to kill and defeat all non-believers on the day he supposedly comes back to earth.

Now this is where it gets really interesting, Christians not only quote and use the Old Testament on a regular basis, but also relate the stories and supposed prophecies of the Old Testament to Jesus, and see him as a messiah that came to fulfil the Old Testament prophecies. I love how some will even go as far as saying, oh those laws are for the Jews only? Huh?? So are you saying that religious Jews, who only believe in the Old Testament of the Bible, and not the new, are the most violent people on earth? No, because all religions are violent, evil, outdated, and destroy your mind.

It is so hypocritical and stupid for Christians to conveniently say that the Old Testament does not apply. Interesting enough, they pick the scriptures they like in the Old Testament and use it all the time, but then ignore the repulsive ones, and there are MANY! For instance, Christians will take the Ten commandments from the Old Testament book of Exodus and want to have it written all over public areas, but then they simply ignore the fact that Exodus also says “kill those who work on the Sabbath” (Exodus 31:12-15). Hypocrisy and stupidity at its finest! Religion damages your mind. Your brain is so powerful, stop allowing religion to hold it back from achieving its full potential!

How Christians hide behind the “Oh that’s just the Old Testament” argument is mind-boggling!

Submission from one of my readers:

Hebrews 1:12
And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.

Hebrews 13:7-9
Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. 8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. 9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.

Malachi 3:6
For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

I Samuel 15:29
He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.

Psalm 102:27
But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

Isaiah 40:8
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

Malachi 3:6
For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Matthew 5:17
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them.

Religious apologists, particularly those of the Christian variety, are big fans of what I have dubbed, the atheist atrocities fallacy. Christians commonly employ this fallacy to shield their egos from the harsh reality of the brutality of their own religion, by utilizing a most absurd form of the tu quoque (“you too”) fallacy, mingled with numerous other logical fallacies and historical inaccuracies. Despite the fact that theatheist atrocities fallacy has already been thoroughly exposed by Hitchens and other great thinkers, it continues to circulate amongst the desperate believers of a religion in its death throes. Should an atheist present a believer with the crimes committed by the Holy See of the Inquisition(s), the Crusaders and other faith-wielding misanthropes, they will often hear the reply; “Well, what about Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler? They were atheists, and they killed millions!”

I was subscribed to this website’s blog for a while. I’ve always had this feeling that some of the writers post things out of their realm of comfort; especially about atheism. A lot of their posts about atheism are labeled wrong. It’s like they have an agnostic write those posts, or someone that’s not an atheist at all. Anyway, moving on.

10. “What if you’re wrong?”

That isn’t something you need to worry about. I’m not trying to force my lack of beliefs on you, and if I’m wrong, so be it. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. But I live a good life, and I would hope that a just and loving deity would be okay with that. -Mommyish

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A note to the hostile readers:

Before you leave some idiot comment about God, Hell, free will, original sin, etc; before you attempt to rescue us, warn us, threaten us or pity us, please remember that this page doesn’t exist for you. We've heard it before. We probably know your bible better than you do. And we've chosen reason over superstition.